793.94/4854
Memorandum by the Secretary of State
During the call of the Italian Ambassador today he said that the question was being raised whether I intended my position taken in the note of January 7th and the Borah letter to apply to a revision of the Versailles Treaty.2 I replied that my country was not a party to the [Page 592] Versailles Treaty and no such question was raised. I pointed out that my note of January 7th referred to two treaties, the Nine Power Treaty and the Pact of Paris; that the Assembly of the League of Nations had subsequently adopted the same principle in respect to the Pact of Paris and Article X of the Covenant; that in the Pact of Paris we had all agreed to settle our controversies by no other but pacific means, and in the note of January 7th and the principle of the resolution of the Assembly it was proposed not to recognize results which were obtained in violation of that covenant and by force or war. I pointed out to the Ambassador that the doctrine did not touch any proposal to revise a treaty by peaceful negotiation or agreement; it did not propose to place the world in a strait-jacket against such peaceful revision or solution of controversies.
- Signed June 28, 1919, Treaties, Conventions, etc., Between the United States of America and Other Powers, 1910–1923 (Washington, Government Printing Office, 1923), vol. iii, p. 3329.↩